auf >Entwicklertagebücher & offizielle Diskussion< wurde geschrieben:

Developer's Diary – Delvings Update

Hi, I'm Mitth, one of the systems designers working on the next update to the Delving system! I want to share more about how we see the current state of Delvings and what we are planning for Return to Carn Dum.

These changes break down into the following categories I'll be discussing:

• General Balance Adjustments: Lowering health, damage and alert difficulty modifiers for enemies across mid-to-high difficulty Tiers.
• Malices Changes: New Malices, adjustments to existing Malices, and a faster Malice rotation.
• Delving Gem Consolidation: Fewer gems for more inventory space.
• Reward Updates: More choice, better rewards, and removing the worst rewards.

General Balance Adjustments:

We are lowering the damage and health difficulty modifiers of enemies, particularly in Tiers 5 through 10. While we want Delvings to be challenging, the general difficulty in mid to high tiers ended up higher than we would like.

We are also decreasing the alert range of enemies at higher tiers. Enemies have a “perception” and a “call for help” radius that activates other enemies in the area once alerted, and these radius effects are currently too large, resulting in a “mob cascade” as nearer enemies alert mobs further away. We want careful pulling to be an important skill to execute, so we will be lowering the size of these radius effects.

Malice Changes:

We will be shifting the rotation of Malices from a weekly to a daily schedule and adding a sixth variant. This will increase variety and ensure that if you are struggling with today's combination, you can get a different experience the next day. We are also reorganizing Malices by type, and only putting one of each type into each variant per band. This prevents you from encountering more than one damaging hotspot, for example, regardless of the combination that day.

We are adding in new Malices that give you the ability to counter their effects, something we call “strong counterplay” in the game design space. We will be adding:

Epic Monster Skills – These are powerful but slow induction enemy Malice skills. Only one attacking enemy will be able to use these skills over the Malice skill's cooldown, that enemy will glow, and you can interrupt its induction. If you don't, the skill will complete!
Cursed Hotspots – These hotspots are cast by enemies on themselves to heal, do more damage, and get other benefits. You will need to move the enemy from its location to lose the effect.

We are replacing or reworking some Malices, particularly at mid to low Tiers, that do not have strong counterplay. Note that some higher Tier Malices like Vengeance or Hydra are not intended to be directly countered. We will also do a balance pass on some Malices like Fire-storm, which will be made weaker than it currently is.

Delving Gem Consolidation:

We are reducing the number and kind of gems the Delving system requires. We'll have four gems that can be used across 12 tiers, with each gem unlocking three levels of delvings (1-3, 4-6, 7-9, 10-12 once the system is expanded.) Gems will also no longer have cracked versions, and players will get the next gem when they successfully complete a delving. You'll get two gems when you are on the edge of bands, like 3 and 6, to get the current and next band's gems. Reminder that gems are unique, so you won't get a second gem if you already have one. If you fail a delving, you'll need to either buy a gem for coin or repeat the previous tier to get the next gem. The prices remain low to keep the purchase process painless. All current gems will be sellable, so you can get coin for extra gems.


Reward updates:

We hear you about wanting more Delving Writs more quickly! We will be adding two weekly quests to Delvings, one to complete a certain number of Delvings at any Tier, and one to complete a smaller number of Delvings on Tier 6 or higher. The rewards for these quests will be Virtue XP and Delving Writs.

We are also adding our first Instances to Delvings with the introduction of The School at Tham Mírdain and The Library at Tham Mírdain! These Instances will also have a small chance at a second, rare Delving Box with rare rewards, with higher Tiers having a better chance at getting the rare Delving Box.

We've also heard you about getting lower-level rewards at higher Tiers, so we've eliminated the worst individual rewards from the Tier 7-10 band and replaced random crafting boxes with a crafting picker box. We will also be removing the rotten fruit and lumps of coal from treasure tables throughout.

Thank you for reading!

We knew Delvings were an ambitious system when we launched it with Before the Shadow, and we knew it would take time to build, tweak, and adapt this system for the live game once players began using it. That's where you come in! What have you liked and disliked about Delvings? What has been your experience running Delvings? Let us know in the comments. Thanks!

Mitth
Systems Team, The Lord of the Rings Online